Day 7 of 'A week in Cambodia'

We had a list of temples to see today. Honestly, all temples were now beginning to look alike. However, since Suporn seemed genuinely excited by going to the temples again, we decided to humour him. We went through the motions of admiring the temple architecture, understanding the history and commending the king who built these temples. Then we moved on the the next temple and did the same again. I remember only one incident during the morning. For the rest, my mind is a blur.

We were in a temple – it could have been Preah Khan just as easily as it could have been some other temple. I had pulled a hamstring the previous day during my climb at Angkor Wat. So I was finding it difficult to scale the steep stairs. Each step was almost a foot in height ! I somehow managed to reach the top without incident. I had difficult in getting down though. I held on to the handrails with both my hands, lowered one leg and then slowly the other. This meant I was doing a speed of 1 step in 5 mins. Sometime during my descent, Abi raced down the stairs and looked up to me (literally!) from the bottom of the stairs. His expression was a look of triumph (at having reached down in record speed) and disguist(at my inability to do the same). I also became aware of a man with a huge backpack standing next to me. My pain was unbearable to him and he offered to help me get down. I had half a mind to accept but I would have felt like a loser if I did. So I didnt. On reaching down, I planned to give Abi grief about not helping me. As soon as I reached level ground I said, “Even a stranger realized I was in huge pain and you didnt bother to help”. Abi ignored me. Not having got the desired response, I continued with this line of conversation for a while. Suddenly Abi turned to me and said “He offered to help you because he is a stranger to your ways. Dont I know what a drama queen you are?” A combination of acute self-realization and extreme anger left me speechless.

By noon we realized that we couldnt possibly eat another random lunch at a shack or look at any more temples. So we requested Suporn to take us back to the city for lunch at FCC. He was deeply hurt that we werent giving Angkor the respect and time it deserved. I was beyond caring now. My mindspace was completely occupied by food. Abi tried to pacify him and said we would return the next day (what a liar!). After an awesome lunch, Suporn decided he would give us a couple of rest hours since he somehow realized he had been through a lot in the past few days. At 4pm, he would come back to take us for a boat ride in the Tonle Sap lake.

We drove through the city for a while and Abi admired the real Cambodia. Gradually, the roads got narrower and the air got smellier. We were reaching the Tonle Sap lake. I obviously expected a relaxing sunset cruise like the one we had in Phnom Penh. I was in for a shock. We were pointed to an unstable looking fishing boat with 2 wooden chairs on it. The smell was positively nauseating now. The water was chocolate brown. A woman was fishing in the lake. Fat chance any fish survived in these hostile conditions and fat chance she would survive after eating fish from this water. We got into the boat and as it started moving, the wooden chairs started sliding backward. I had never felt so scared in my life. As we moved inwards, the water became less brown, the air less smelly and the boat more stable. However, whenever a bigger boat passed us, it did feel like we would topple over. We were taken to a wooden structure in the middle of the lake to see shrimp harvesting. I chose to see the sunset instead. We were completely surrounded by locals each holding a bunch of bananas and offering to sell it to us for a dollar. We (and other tourists) ignored them. Sunset done, we made our way back to Suporn.

At night, we went to watch apsara dance performance – Cambodia’s traditional dance which is strikingly similar to its Thai counterpart. We reached the venue to find that all guests were extremely formally attired. We looked and felt shabby in teams and t-shirts. Even the staff there looked down upon us. We are not easily embarrased at these minor issues and made our way to our seats. I was conscious of atleast hundred pairs of eyes looking at us in disgust. An Old English couple seated next to us tried to get their seats changed but it was a full house. Too bad for them. I liked the dances and the food was passable. Abi looked irritated at having to spend his time and money sitting with pretentious people to watch something he didnt understand. I ignored him, because this is his standard reaction to performing arts.

While this is the end of Day 7, we spent an additional day in Siem Reap just lounging in Blue Pumpkin and reading our books. A well-deserved break after a hectic vacation.